How Jana Kramer and Michael Caussin Healed Their Marriage After Infidelity

Jana Kramer is candid about her life in her recently-launched podcast, Whine Down With Jana Kramer, and in the second episode she chats with her husband, Michael Caussin, about their rocky past.

It hasn't been an easy road. Kramer married the former NFL star in 2015 and their daughter Jolie was born Jan. 31, 2016. The pair broke it off later that year — reports say the split was caused by Caussin's infidelity — but began rebuilding their marriage slowly in 2017. By December 2017, they had renewed their vows in Hawaii.

"One of the reasons I have stayed with you as long as I have, it's because you're a very hands-on dad," Kramer tells him. "Great husband? Eh ..."

Caussin comes in around the 26-minute mark of an episode called "Marriage Uncorked," in which they open up about working on their marriage and navigating the struggles unfaithfulness can cause. He laughs nervously as he admits that his reputation as a husband is "debatable."

The couple went on a marriage retreat in Tennessee last April and sat in a room with a therapist for three days, hashing out their problems. It took a year for them to implement the things they learned in therapy, because Caussin admits it took time for him to want to work on the marriage.

"Until someone wants to change themselves, there's no amount of therapy, no amount of talking you can do about it until you make that decision for yourself," he explains. "It didn't click for me. My pride and ego were still fighting against each other and against my core beliefs and my authenticity. There was an internal battle there for a while. To put my child stuff aside, how set in my ways I was, and to put away my pride and ego and to be vulnerable and intimate, which I still have struggles with, that's something I continue to work on with Jana."

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He goes on to explain that the breaking point for him was an ultimatum Kramer gave him.

"Ultimately it was Jana. It was her being like, 'Look, I'm giving you every opportunity. I am here. I am willing to work on this. I want this family to work,'" he recalls. "Basically, 'Step up or get out.'"

That, he says, was his breaking point — he realized "I don't want to lose Jana, I don't want to lose our family. I don't want to lose what we're trying to build."

Kramer admits they both had things to work on, and being out of the therapist's office — where the responsibility is on the couple — was the hardest part. She's still triggered when she watches a television show or hears news of another celebrity's infidelity.

"He can sense it sometimes and says, 'I'm sorry this is triggering you.' My job now is to stay present. What is he doing to actively fight and be good? He isn't doing those things anymore, so what is today, what is right now? It's hard for him to see why I'm hurt," she admits.

"As a perpetrator, you want to move past what you've done to hurt somebody," Caussin adds. "Every day I'm trying to show face and do something different and when she gets into a triggered space or a hurt space, she's going back in time. That's been difficult for both of us and for me especially, in those moments, to set what I'm doing aside right now and to travel back in time with her and to be there for her in those emotions."

Kramer says that Caussin's found ability to be able to look back and recognize her pain is what saved their marriage. "What is different is he is able to meet me with my emotions and validate my feelings, acknowledge them, and we can move forward and also stay in the present," she concedes.